From the Mind
by rubyshards
Summary: AU. SeiferxSquall. Summary inside. War and poverty stricken, the world is falling apart at the seams. Seifer Almasy, an exSorceress Knight stricken with amnesia, meets Squall Leonhart, a mysterious traveler, and has to face a past he doesn't remember.
1. Prologue

**_From the Mind_  
**Prologue  
_"when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire"  
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this is the only time i'm doing this, so pay attention! _

**Author**: chaosvincent  
**Disclaimer**: All places and characters relating to Final Fantasy VIII (c) Square-Enix.  
**Pairing:** SeiferxSquall  
**Rating**: M  
**Summary**: In a world of war, magic, and poverty, Seifer Almasy, a washed-up Sorceress Knight stricken with amnesia, must struggle to find his place. Living at the Dincht Inn, where villagers Ma and Zell Dincht took him and and nursed him back to health, he lives a pointless life, plagued by a Darkness that never seems to yield to the Light, and memories that haunt him in his dreams. He feels he has no where to turn, no where to go, and the war that's left his hometown in shambles has only seemed to come to a temporary end, the threat of a Sorceress looming over the land and causing an uprise in the villagers.

When Squall Leonhart,an injured, icy-cold travelerbaring a strikingly familiar brand on his right breast, appears at the Dincht Inn, memories from a war-torn past begin to resurface, and he's pulled on a journey to pick up the pieces of a life he doesn't even know he lived, a love he never knew he had, and a past he wishes he could put behind him, once and for all.  
**Warnings**: AU,slash, language, violence, adult situations, strange tense for the prologue  
**Special Thanks**: A special thank you goes out to my beta-reader, Yuumoya (LJ),for helping me get writing and for providing me with a title, and my sister, Mailsi (LJ), for sitting through two hours of plot development over AIM even though she was at the desk next to mine.

what have i gotten myself into now?

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There was a time when the Darkness wasn't feared. 

He's heard about it. A time when it was just merely there, a part of life, a part of the world, and there was no need to fear it or worry what it might do next, because it was just going to vanish when the sun woke from its slumber the next morning, light chasing away the black demons and bringing the world back to life. It was routine.

He can't remember what the true light looks like.

The Darkness sticks around now, always hanging there, always dancing in the alleys or the backs of your eyelids. There's no sun. He remembers that there used to be, a long time ago, but he couldn't tell you what it looks like. The colors of the day are lost in the Darkness, swallowed up and spit back out in monochrome Plainness, eating up the Time and chewing that over, too, until it's impossible to tell whether its day or not unless you look real hard, squint at the gray and the black.

Sometimes the rays of the sun slip through, making the black a little less black and a little more gray, and that's when people know. That's when it's day, and when the Darkness Hours come, well, that's when it's night, because the land is so dark and so thick that you can't even breath without gagging on the dark that clings to you as you walk.

Gray, black, open shop, close shop. Don't look out the door, because you don't know what could be out there, but don't look in, either, because the artificial firelight is too strong for you, too bright to bear after all of that Dark stained into your eyes and your flesh.

He closes the door with a click, locks it up tight for the Darkness Hours. Darkness Hours are closed hours - when the swarming black falls over the land, then the doors shut, all at once, a crow's call to the death plague sweeping over like some horrid creature, swallowing up the sun and dosing it in black water.

The Darkness is just as artificial as the firelight that chases it back from the windows of the houses. The war made sure of that. 'True Darkness,' the real make-your-skin-crawl stuff, the pure black, was lost when the war shattered it all like it was just one big, dark-tinted window. 'Night' ceased to exist as 'night.' 'Night' became the Darkness Hours, and Darkness Hours became more than just the average twelve-hour black that 'night' used to bring to the land.

Occasionally, the Darkness lingers for days, enshrouding the land in a veil so black that one can't see his hand in front of his face, even if he holds it two inches away from his nose. Sometimes it sticks around only for a few hours, maybe four, five, maybe six or so, then it just vanishes, melts off away from impossible black to daylight gray.

He pulls back from the door, slides his hand off it, and turns to face the inside of the room, jade eyes never falling on the faux firelight dancing through the antechamber he's standing in. The room he's in is simple, plain, and sparingly furnished – they don't have the money to do much, but it's never really mattered. There's a few wooden tables - some are crooked, and one is missing a leg, but he fixed that for Ma when he first came here, and now there's a little lopsided stick holding it up - and a few wooden chairs - just as crooked as the tables, if not more so; he couldn't fix those quite as easily. A dark red rug is tossed between it all, spread out before the gray stone fireplace, and a few barrels, filled with the inn's supply of food and beverage for the next few months, are stacked neatly off to the side.

A window is to the far right-hand side, but he doesn't turn to look at it. The Darkness has been staying longer recently, growing more persistent, pounding away at the buildings and the people inside almost as if it was searching for something, digging through the dirt for that little speck of gold it lost.

The window is cracked and dirty, anyway, and he boarded it up last week to keep the Darkness and the thieves from breaking in it like they did two weeks ago, so he wouldn't have been able to see through it anyway.

He still doesn't look, though.

There's a staircase up to the left, and he turns to it, walking passed the ancient, gray wood before heading into a back door pressed to the wall that the stairs are imbedded in. Up there, that's just the inn rooms, the rooms for the few customers that they do get when the Darkness Hours aren't around. He's tried asking why he can't just sleep there, in a real bed, but Ma just said that they have to stay nice for the guests. He doesn't question her - it's not worth it.

The door opens up to the back room, a tiny kitchen and storage, and a little door tucked to the side, which he enters by ducking down and squeezing in passed the little wooden frame that he doesn't quite fit through. A mattress, held together by old brown cloth from Ma's traveling cloaks and one of his own, sewn by Ma herself and stuffed with what hay they could find, takes up most of the little room, and he tosses himself down on it with a thud, arms folding behind his head, eyes focusing on the rotting wood in the ceiling above him.

It's not much, hardly enough to be called an inn, but it's the only one in the whole damn city, and he's quite proud of it. The business isn't good, and the pay isn't any better, but he has a home, and he has food, so he's perfectly fine with the dingy old thing if it'll keep him going for that little bit longer.

They don't get business during the Darkness Hours. No one ventures outside to brave the Darkness, to come to the inn, and those who do don't make it through the stuff sane enough to get a room of their own. When the Darkness is around, the streets are bare and dead, and the regular sounds of life in the city are no longer filling the air. There's a dead silence, a chill numb that soaks down into the bone and shakes a person from the inside out, that freezes the heart and the guts just by listening to the simple Nothing that's out there. They've never had customers when the Darkness is around, and since the Darkness has been here for what seems like an eternity, then they probably won't be getting any guests during the night, and he leans heavy into the mattress, content feline grin on his face. There's no need to sit behind the desk and wait or stand behind the door and wait if no one is even going to open the door he's waiting on.

He dozes off to sleep, lets himself fall into a relaxed state of half-consciousness and half-awareness that has been trained into his flesh and burned into his mind in the past, though he doesn't know exactly what from. 'Be always alert, always aware of the world around you - if you fall off into unconsciousness for too long, the Darkness will get you in your sleep, will eat you up and never give you back, trap you in the black Nothing that always tugs away at the Something that you are.'

He doesn't remember where he heard that, who told him those words, but he knows they're right.

That strange half-sleep comes easy to him, washing him over, cleaning out his mind and letting him lie there, blank and refreshed, staring up at the wood ceiling above him. He lets his thoughts wander, lets himself drift off into the Darkness for only a minute, and in that minute he wonders just when the Darkness will finally part and when he'll get a chance to get out of this damn town, out of this little inn and back into the life that's awaiting him.

He knows that things haven't always been like this, that he hasn't always had such a small role in the massive confusing rush that is life. He knows there was a time when he would walk through the Darkness like it wasn't even there, that he'd stroll through the streets in the middle of the Darkness Hours and wander about as if he owned the world, a great warrior and a mighty king ready to take on anything.

He can't remember it, though. He wishes he could, tries as hard as possible to do so, but he can't.

And that frustrates him to no end.

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_Another attempt at a chapter fic, that's what I have gotten myself into. Let's just hope my life doesn't hate me, my muses are feeling friendly, and my migraines stay away, and everything should go perfectly fine. :D_

Does eat spaces in documents for anyone else, or is this just me? If so, I apologize for any strange incidents in the text. sighs I try. 


	2. Chapter One

**_From the Mind  
_**Chapter One  
_by chaosvincent_

_"'for it might end, you know' said Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing." - _Alice in Wonderland by C.S. Lewis_

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Seifer awoke the next day to the sound of what he assumed to be an explosion, it had gone off so loud, and he had nearly leaped out of his skin in surprise while his sleep-laced mind pulled him from the slumber he had unintentionally slipped into the night before. Jade eyes scrambled about the room, scanning for some sign as to what had awakened him, and the rush of a warrior's impulse in his blood made his hand itch for the blade he had tucked away beneath the mattress of his bed.

He forced himself to take a deep breath. Judging by the voices spilling in from the kitchen outside of his room, the noise had been a result of something the innkeeper's son had done and not some attack made against him as he slept, and he fell back down into bed with a hiss of breath at this realization.

If that was the case, then he wouldn't mind going back to sleep for a few more hours, disregarding the sound and the voices it brought as something that didn't involve him in the least bit (although he was quite certain he had heard his name somewhere in all of the shouting, but that wasn't his concern at the moment).

Mornings at the Dincht Inn always proved to be interesting, even when there were no guests for him to tend to and no broken doors or windows for him to repair. The innkeeper liked to set up a strict schedule he was to follow each and every morning – wake up at dawn, clean up the kitchen, move the needed food barrels for the day into the storage room, make repairs, and then stay up as late as he possibly could, keeping an eye out for customers. The work he did for the inn wasn't nearly enough, in his eyes, and he would gladly to more, were he to be asked to do so.

Today, however, was one of the few days where he simply wouldn't mind crawling back beneath the rough, earthy-colored blankets of his bed, burrowing his head away from the firelight that danced beneath his door and through the grain in the wood that had cracked wide open in age, and go back to sleep.

A sliver of said light pooled through the crack under his door now, and Seifer tossed a heavy arm over his eyes to block out the little dance of orange that was taunting him with its glow – a sure sign he was needed awake and ready to deal with the dirty work the innkeeper pegged him with. Thin, cracked lips groaned out a protest, and he rolled onto his side, away from the light and the door that let it in, hoping against all hope that he could simply slip away into the peaceful bliss of slumber once again and pretend he wasn't needed in the waking world.

The nights were dragging on longer now, anyway. As it stood, he had every right to stay in bed – the Darkness still lingered outside, and, although he had no window to see it, he could sense it prickling at his nerves and prying at his senses, and that alone was enough reason for him to want to fall back into the slumber his mind so often deprived him of.

Normally, he didn't sleep. His mind would work away at the things in his life that were uncertainties, would eat at his consciousness and keep him staring up at the gray, splintered wood ceiling above his head, waiting for some answer to creep into his mind and let him rest.

Last night had been a rare occurrence, but it had felt _good_, and there was no way in hell he was ready to let that go, even if it did mean getting a scolding from the innkeeper later.

"Almasy, you lazy prick, get out of bed and get out here – we've got work to do today."

He wished the world would just leave him alone right now, because he was still too tired to want to work, and his mind was still so thickly laced with thoughts and twists and pulls from the night before that he was sure the knots his mind had wound itself into would take days for him to unravel properly.

The door to his tiny room, tucked away in the side of the kitchen wall, crashed open, and in only a matter of moments he found himself flipped onto his back and pinned down onto the bumpy, hay mattress he slept on by strong hands – strong for their size and the age of their possessor, at least – on his shoulders, a little body on his abdomen, and a grinning face that looked like it was ready to split in half any minute, the smile was so intense, peering down at him.

He suddenly couldn't decide which bothered him more – the kitchen firelight pouring in through the cracks in his door, or the blonde boy perched upon his waist, smiling down at him like it was the most amusing thing in the Hyne-be-damned world that the brat had managed to finally wake him up from his pleasant slumber.

"'Mornin,' sunshine." The voice was too energetic for this time of morning, and Seifer wanted to lean up toward the teen on his waist and smack him on the side of that spiky, blonde head of his, because he was _not _in the mood for one of the little chicken's morning wake-up calls. "Looks like ya skipped out on your nightly duties. Ma's pretty mad at ya, so I wouldn't expect a good breakfast this mornin,' and I bet you're gonna be gettin' a lot of work today. It's your own fault, ya know."

"G'off me, you pain-in-the-ass, little runt." Had it not been for the fact that he didn't want to harm the kid, he would have lifted him up by his shoulders, tossed him out of the door, and slammed it shut behind him, quite content with the idea of said wooden door slamming the energetic boy in the ass as he was tossed from the room.

"Not 'till you promise you're gonna get out of bed when I do get off. You've got a busy day ahead of ya, Seifer, and Ma wants you out there now so you can get started."

Seifer Almasy had never been a patient man, quite frankly, but waking up at six o'clock in the morning to the sound of the innkeeper's son tearing through the kitchen in some bull run through the inn to awaken him was one of the few things that wore his patience thin in only a matter of seconds. Large, muscular arms wrapped around the boy's chest easily enough, and he swept the blonde from his waist, tossing him down onto the end of the bed and as far away from his face as possible. He snorted out a laugh at the squeal that broke from his smaller companion before proceeding to shove his head beneath the makeshift pillow and force out the sound of the flailing preteen he had tossed.

"Why should I get up, Chickie? It's not like we even have any customers today any way. We never fuckin' have customers, but I always have to fuckin' get up and—"

The boy was back on his waist in a matter of seconds, ripping the pillow away from his head and tossing it out of the door and into the kitchen with a sneer of victory plastered onto his thin lips.

"Actually, we got a real important customer in this morning, so get yer ass out of bed an' come out here to get your orders from Ma. She said we got ta treat him really nice, and make sure everything is perfect, so you gotta get up now and get goin,' Seifer!" There was a total of a two second pause before a small fist connected with his cheek, and he grinned up at the teen in amusement at the flushed look of pure annoyance that had slipped onto his round, boyish face. "An' stop calling me 'Chickie,' you bastard. I'm nothin' like a chicken."

"'Look like a chicken to me. I ruffled up your feathers again." He leaned up on the bed, grabbing the boy into his arms in the process and pulling the squirming fighter upside-down as he straightened up, content with the bright red flush of anger that swept over his tanned face as his head was shoved into the mattress. A well-trained kick launched out toward his head, and Seifer grinned once more as he leaned his head to the side, neatly missing the attack, and laughing as the chicken thrashed in his arms and tossed about like his namesake with its head cut off. "If ya squeal like that again, I might think you're more of a pig than a chicken."

Unfortunately for Seifer, the second kick didn't quite miss its mark, and he fumbled back as a strong shin collided with the side of his sleep-mused head, sending his vision dancing.

"What the hell was that for?" He had a sudden desire to toss the boy off of the bed entirely, regardless of what pain he might cause him.

The innkeeper's son had been trained in martial arts since a young age, in a means of self-defense and protection for the conflicts brought about by the war that had just come to an end, and the skills he had acquired from his training over the past years had nowhere else to focus on other than Seifer, as the little blonde liked to remind him.

He could pack quite a punch, if he tried hard enough.

"For callin' me a pig, you asshole! You're more of a pig than I am."

His patience finally running thin, he surrendered to that sudden urge, and in a flurry of kicks and punches in retaliation to his assault, he tossed the smaller boy to the ground, a feline smirk playing on his lips at the flustered yelp and thrash of movement that so gracefully comprised the chicken's fall to the earth.

"Apparently chickens really can't fly." A flustered glare shot his way from beneath the tussled blonde hair that had fallen in the teen's eyes, slender hands working along the blonde's scalp to message where he had hit the ground in his descent. A little pout was set on his lips, and his eyes were crossed, staring up at Seifer with a glare of contempt.

"That hurt!"

"Yeah, well, you fucking deserved it." The larger blonde shifted his weight, tugging his hand through the fringe of knotted hair that had fallen about his ears and forehead in his sleep.

A few months ago, his hair had been a lot shorter than that – slicked back and well kempt, a perfect look of arrogance and strength, like he preferred it to be. Over time, however, he had let his hair grow to the tips of his ears, brushing along his temple and dancing about his brow and over the vertical scar that tore a dividing line between his emerald green eyes.

He scoffed when he realized he had slipped back into the hazy thoughts of the past.

"Zell, Almasy, what are you boys doing in there? We have a lot of work to do today, and I want you two to hurry up and get out here. Move it!" Ma's voice called out from somewhere in the inn, bringing Seifer back to his senses and out of the foggy state of thought that he had let settle over him. Both blondes groaned, and Seifer pushed himself out of the cocoon of blankets he had tangled himself in throughout the night and to his feet. He stretched, angling his back to relieve the tension of muscle that had worked along his spine in his cramped sleeping conditions, and reached over to the pile of clothing that filled up the remainder of the space in his little room, tugging a dark green tunic away from the pile and pulling it over his head. Dark brown work boots followed, and he tugged them on with a swift pull, lacing up the black strings along his ankles before straightening himself once more. With a final wave of his arm to signal for Zell to follow him, he began his walk out of the room, the hasty patter of the chicken's footsteps behind him falling into step with his own.

"Ma's gettin' mad again, and it's all your fault, Seifer. If you didn't sleep all day, we'd have everything done by now." The boy sprinted up to his side, catching up with the quickened pace the advantage of long legs provided Seifer with, and he glanced down at his small friend with a pointed glare of molten emerald eyes.

The teen stood at a good five-feet or so, only making it up to the center of Seifer's chest when they stood side by side as they did now. An unruly tangle of spiky, sunlight-blonde hair hung around sky-blue eyes, and a tattoo, etched along the gentle curves of his almost animal-like, pointed features, stood out as a harsh black-blue against his sun kissed skin. Pointed, pearl teeth slipped over slender lips when he smiled that morning-sun smile of his, and Seifer was more reminded of a canine than anything else when he looked at the energetic youth at his side.

Although Chickie fit just as well, in his loving opinion.

"Yeah, it's always my fault. I get it."

The two of them had been working together at the inn for some time now, ever since Ma and the Chickie had found him passed out in the alleyways of the city four months ago, and a partnership of sorts had grown between them, although most wouldn't be able to tell it from the way they acted around each other.

Seifer had no remaining family – well, no family he could remember, at any rate – and Zell only had the adoptive mother he had found in Ma Dincht to keep him company. When Seifer had first arrived at the Dincht's Inn, that night during the Darkness Hours right after the war had come to an end, he had been weakened, stricken with amnesia and illness, and had been unable to even differentiate between reality and falsehood, let alone know how to care for himself. Zell had been the first to provide for him, and had been the one to convince Ma to take him in as another member of the Dincht family – and so she had, and here he was, assimilated into the dysfunctional family the three of them made up, and Zell had grown into a little brother to him, over the time they spent together at the inn.

"Yeah, it _is_ always your fault."

A little brother who was very, very good at pissing him off.

As they stepped out into the inn entrance hall, Ma greeted them before Seifer could come up with a response to the taunting jeer from his little companion, and the taller blonde had to brace himself to keep from having the air smashed from his lungs as Ma pulled them both into her regulatory morning hug.

Ma was a friendly woman, warm, carefree and loved throughout most of the town for the motherly way she treated everyone and anyone who stopped at the inn, and anyone else she ever came across as well, for that matter. She was large in stature, standing up to Seifer's chin, and she had a hearty laugh to her and a warm smile that made even the most wary of customers stay for a while, if only for a drink and a chat with her. Over the course of his stay here, Seifer still hadn't learned the woman's real name – everyone in the town just called her 'Ma,' and that had been good enough for him.

He owed it to Ma that he was still around and in one piece, and not some crazed man out on the streets in the Darkness.

He needed to thank her for that, one of these days.

Ma released them swiftly, pulling back and standing before them both to look them up and down in that concentrated way she always did, as if searching for some way that either of them had changed over the past few days. A dishrag was in one hand and her other was resting on her hip in that scolding manner of hers, and she paced away from them to continue cleaning one of the tables she had flipped up-right for this elusive new guest of theirs. Seifer followed after her, Zell hot on his heels as he always was, and he leaned, heavily, against the bar at the far back of the room, waiting for the reprimand and orders he was certain he was going to receive.

"Took you boys long enough. You've got a lot of work to do today, and Seifer, I hope that extra sleep ya got did ya good, because you sure ain't goin' to be getting any tonight."

Somehow, he saw that much coming from the very beginning, and he was very glad his mind had actually allowed him to get some sleep last night, for once.

"So, Ma, where's this supposed 'guest' that we got in? I haven't even seen him yet." Ma stopped cleaning the table, and she turned, a stern look chiseled into the round, soft features of her plump face, and Seifer realized that this guest must be more than just the odd bum they found out on the streets.

"If you'd be patient for once, I'd get a chance to explain all of that." Seifer did as he was told, his slender lips shutting up tight, and he noted that even the Chicken had stopped the normal barrage of questions he would be prattling off under any other circumstance. "He's in the back room. I found him in the entrance hall this morning, standing there waiting for someone to serve him," She glared a scolding glance in Seifer's direction, and he rolled his eyes. It was just his luck that the one night he decided to go and get some sleep, instead of sitting up to wait for the guests who will never come, someone actually _does_ brave the Darkness to wander into their inn. "He's not in the best condition – passed out after paying for his room, never got to tell me how long he was planning on staying or what his name was. It's gonna be up to you to take care of him, Seifer. Zell, honey, all you need to do is run upstairs and clean up the best room we've got for him, alright?"

"Gotcha, Ma!" Zell nodded, pushing himself off of the stool he had been sitting on before bounding up the stairs in a blur of blonde, eager to obey Ma's orders and free up his schedule for the rest of the afternoon.

Seifer focused dark green eyes back on Ma after Zell left, a frown set hard on his tanned face, and he folded his arms over his chest, tilting his head back. "So you pretty much want me to play nurse for however long it takes for this guy to recover, right? Since when did I get pegged with a job like that?"

"Since you decided to start ignoring your duties. Now why don't you head back there and make sure our guest hasn't woken up yet, and if he has, be a gentleman and make him feel right at home. He's injured, so you're gonna need to change his bandages as soon as he wakes up, whenever that might be. Be gentle with 'im, and don't complain, 'cause I'll make ya sleep in the attic if you do." He waved a hand in dismissal as he moved, pushing away from the bar countertop before heading toward the stairs at the far end of the room and the back chamber Ma had indicated early.

"Yeah, I'm going."

"And try to be nice to him, Seifer! This is a real important guest this time, so you better drop that attitude of yours and act your age!"

"I'll try." He vanished up the stairs, shaking his head as he went and running a hand through his still sleep-tussled hair. "So I'm stuck babysitting, huh?" The words were directed more to himself than anything else, in an effort to keep his mind occupied, and he shoved his hands in the rough pockets of his old, dirt brown trousers as he walked, a sigh curling from his thin lips and brushing along his chest.

Having someone wander into the inn in such an injured state, passing out as soon as they walked through the door, wasn't as rare of a thing as one would think. With the end of the war that had just recently torn apart the country and the current state the citizens had spiral into, people were left poor, ruined, and injured, and most of the customers they had acquired over the past few months had either been soldiers on their way home from the war or people who had been caught in the deadly crossfire and now had nowhere else to go, left to wander from place to place in search of food and shelter.

Despite all of this, the Dincht inn was never very busy, even during the lightest hours of the day. Few people wanted to come into the bar and inn combination – although he wasn't sure why, because the inn was sure as hell a better place to stay than the rundown buildings people tried to call homes in this city – and few people had the money to, even if they only charged a simple twenty-piece golden coin to stay the night and have a good breakfast in the morning. The war had wiped people's pockets clean of all gold, and had sucked up all of the business with it – they were lucky if they could pull in enough customers to pay for the provisions and repairs that needed to be paid for on a monthly basis.

The inn had housed only two guests in the past month – an old man who had wandered in last week, before the Darkness Hours had returned from the halt in the search they had initiated only Hyne knew how long ago, and a youthful woman with raven-black hair and a grin that was simple and sweet and pleasant to look at, as long as you didn't watch her for too long. The Darkness Hours had gotten to her, and she mumbled a little to herself, whispered things he couldn't really understand, and, quite frankly, didn't want to.

Both had fled swiftly, after only a measly one-night stay, and he was quite certain he wasn't going to be getting his pay for this month any time soon.

The prospect of having a new customer to inhabit the inn, as bothersome as it might be that he was the one forced to care for their injured guest, was promising. With the new customer and the way Ma was treating the man, he was positive he'd be able to pull in some form of pay within the next month, and that was all he needed to keep him going as he stepped up to the door at the far end of the hallway.

Receiving pay meant a chance for him to finally get out and buy a good set of clothing and a new traveling cloak – two things he honestly wouldn't mind having in his possession, what with the upcoming threat of the winter season breathing down the necks of the people. The current clothes he owned consisted of a poor mockery of pants and a tunic, hand sewn by Ma for him when he had first been taken in, and the clothing he had been found in – a torn, shredded mess of the knight pants and tunic that were worn underneath full body armor, stained with blood and dirt – and those were obviously out of the question.

Seifer pulled open the door with a silent, careful tug, stepping inside of the room and shutting it behind him in quiet haste for fear of disturbing their guest. The room in the far back of the inn was really Ma's room, and for a customer to be resting in that room, even while they were setting up a chamber of his own, was proof enough that Ma was taking this situation seriously. It was tucked away into a tiny corner of the hall, separate from the guest rooms that were down the hallway by a curve in the path that led of to two rooms – Ma's and Zell's, each one across from the other. Ma's room was the biggest room in the inn, and the most furnished, but it wasn't the most ornate of the rooms. Ma liked her life simple, and her room reflected that perfectly.

The chamber wasn't much, even if it was the nicest room in the inn. A fireplace sent a splash of reds, yellows, and oranges dancing along the wooden walls, and a four-post bed took up most of the remaining free space in the room. It was, by far, the nicest and most expensive possession the entire Dincth family owned. It was made of furnished dark oak, and the mattress was a stitched cushion stuffed with fresh hay on a weekly basis. Dark blue quilts, sewn by Ma herself, lined the bed, and a stack of pillows she had purchased to go along with the bed, all those years ago, were piled up at the head of the mattress. The bed had been bought by Ma's late husband before the war had started, and she cherished that thing more than any other possession she owned – Seifer was surprised to find she had even let someone else use the thing, it was so dear to her.

He stepped inside of the room, peering about swiftly to make sure everything was still in place and that their guest hadn't decided to wake up while everyone was making a fuss about him, snag something, and then make his escape – they'd had that happen, once before, when a thief had come in as a customer and left with what little money they had managed to gather up that week.

He still had half a mind to chase down that bastard, as soon as the Darkness receded enough for him to want to get out of the damned inn on his own, and beat the shit out of him for making Ma and Zell suffer through a week with little provisions.

Luckily, the room was still intact when he entered, and he let out a breath of relief about that. They couldn't risk a loss such as that one again, especially with the Darkness chasing away the customers they would normally be serving. They hadn't had a good amount of pay in a while, so it was understandable that Ma was so excited about the new guest, and Seifer told himself he'd be nice, just this once, if it would make Ma happy.

The only out-of-place thing, he noted, was that the fire didn't seem to be doing its job of warming the room to the extent that it should – a near deathly chill hung in the air, and the blonde was almost positive he could see his breath curling before him in a dance of faint ice crystals, his brow lifting in question. It was true that the winter season was starting to creep in, but the year's first snow had yet to fall, and the fact that he could see his breath inside at all was more than enough for him to be concerned. Jade eyes flickered to the side, glancing along the left wall and toward the wide glass window that overlooked the town from the second-story position, in search of any way that the cold could be seeping into the room, but he came up empty-handed.

Muffled groaning off to his left snapped him out of the musings he had allowed himself to spiral into, and he suddenly remembered that he had a guest he was supposed to be tending to. Gathering up his thoughts and plastering on that sickening smile he used around the customers, he strode up to the bedside where the current guest was resting, peering down at the crumbled form curled up upon the mattress with almost curious interest.

"Well, shit."

The sight that greeted him when he reached the bed was far from what he had expected to see, and he couldn't help but gape in awe as he stared down at the lithe form on the mattress, viridian eyes scanning up and down the man in inspection.

The first thing he noticed was that the man spread out on the sheets was in far worse condition than what he initially anticipated, even from Ma's words. Stark white bandages were wrapped around his exposed chest and arms, hiding away the pale skin that rest beneath in all places other than his broad shoulders – he could tell he had been wrapped by Ma; he knew that patchwork anywhere, had had it bound about him enough times to know when the skilled innkeeper had played a hand in the recovery. An ink-black traveling cloak was wrapped around his waist, pulled down by Ma so she could get to the injuries that lie beneath, and, judging by the thick bundles of the cloth that were stuck together about his torso, the injuries must have been fresh and bleeding at the time Ma had found him. Matching dark pants hugged close to his slender, long legs, a sure sign of a traveler who wished to move silently and freely without clothing as a hindrance, and sturdy, black leather boots composed the rest of his outfit. More white bandages wrapped around his forehead, obscuring his brow from view, and a pained expression was crossed over the ruby-red, full lips and well-formed cheekbones in the man's state of unconsciousness.

Seifer was, honestly, surprised that he had managed to make it as far as the inn and still have enough strength to pay Ma for a room. Judging by the condition of the traveler, it was obvious he had been in such a state for quite some time, and the telltale signs of a long journey wearing away at this already harsh injuries were evident in the paled skin and worn-out traveling garb he wore.

The second thing Seifer perceived when he took a closer look at the man was that there was something strikingly familiar and oddly unreal about him. He couldn't place his finger on it, wasn't really sure what it was, but there was something about their guest that stood out, made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up when he looked at the too-pale skin, the muscular-yet-slender build, and the gently gaping lips as they sucked in pained breaths. Dark chocolate hair hung about his face, brushing along his cheekbones, his bangs hanging close to his jaw, and dark lashes rested on flushed skin, adding a look of abnormal brilliance to the man's appearance. Blackish-blue rings marred the skin beneath his closed eyes, making him appear so much older and wiser than he obviously was. Judging from the soft curves of his skin where injuries, bandages and scars were littered, he had to have been in his early twenties, possibly younger even than Seifer was, if only by a year or two.

A distant portion of his mind screamed at him that there was something important here, something memorable he should be remembering, should be recalling, but it wouldn't come to him, no matter how long he watched the unconscious man fight through his fitful state of slumber. A sharp sting inched down into the knots of scar tissue across the bridge of his nose, and absentmindedly he reached up, rubbing at the burning flesh with the tip of his forefinger and his thumb.

There was something _incredibly_ familiar about him, now that he thought about it.

He just wished he could find out what 'it' was.

"Who the hell are you?" The words slipped from his mouth without any real meaning as he pulled a chair up to the bedside, content to just sit and watch his charge as Ma had told him to do, and he wished that the man resting before him would wake up and give him an answer to the question that the cold silence whisked away after he asked.

He was only a little disappointed when he never received one.

* * *

_I honestly have only a basic idea of where _exactly_ this story is going, how long it will be, or how often I will update it, but, rest assured, I promise to take time to put more effort into the chapter fics I have started. With the claims I have (five of them, each with one-hundred themes to write for, to be exact) updating may seem a little difficult, but I promise to update as soon as possible. Chapter two is already four pages in, and is going along rather nicely; updates shouldn't take too horribly long if I can keep this pace up. Wish me luck._

_Well,until then._


	3. Chapter Two

_**From the Mind  
**Chapter Two  
by chaosvincent_

_"where i end and you begin; the sky is falling in" - Radiohead, Hail to the Theif album_

* * *

Seifer wasn't exactly sure how many minutes had passed while he had been sitting there, in that chilled room, with his eyes focused on the mysterious traveler before him, but he knew it was enough to cause his eyelids to fall heavy with fatigue and his mind to spiral off into the inner workings it liked to wander into when he didn't have anything to occupy his hands with, other than the hem of his old, forest-green tunic. 

He had been trying for what seemed like hours to answer all of the questions that came to mind, and he wasn't any closer to an answer than he had been at the very beginning. After running through all of the possible explanations for the strange man, after digging through what memories he actually could dredge up, he still found himself at a loss for an explanation, and with a headache to fill the gap.

To be honest, he didn't even know why it bothered him so much. The man was a stranger, just another war victim who had washed up at their inn and who he needed to care for, because he had neglected his duties during the late hours of night. There wasn't anything special about him, wasn't anything out of place about him – other than the radiating chill that seemed to seep from his very being and drop the temperature of the room down to a level that sent shivers dancing along Seifer's spine.

Then again, there was something about him that struck the blonde as odd, _different_, in some way or another. The man seemed to be no ordinary traveler – the sinewy build of muscle hidden beneath the folds of traveler's garb and the sculpted, solid chest bound up in white bandages gave him the look of a fighter more than a rogue.

Something in him responded to the man. He realized it the moment he let his eyes fall on the slumbering, pained face, let himself take in the appearance and the dress of the man who was spread before him, deep asleep. A part of his mind that he could no longer access, a place where his past and his family and what he used to be was locked away, held up tight and put away from him, seemed to respond to the man. He didn't know why, didn't know what exactly it was he was trying so desperately to remember, trying to imagine, but he knew it had to do with the man before him, and that was enough to cause a sickening chill to build up in his gut, like a block of solid ice had settled into his system to stay.

He focused on the space around him, sitting upright in his chair, to keep his mind off of the traveler, for now.

The chill of the room had not gone as he had sat there, and, instead, it seemed to grow, as if an unseen, impossible blizzard had worked into the house, spiraling through the room and soaking into the atmosphere. He was half-tempted to pull one of the blankets from the closet to wrap up in, the chill was growing so intense, but he dispelled the idea out of sheer stubbornness. A delicate map of gooseflesh prickled at his arms and the exposed nape of his throat, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on edge, stiff and alert as if to warn him of some oncoming danger. Moist particles of breath still danced before his vision, perfectly clear and much thicker now, more so than they had been when he first walked into the room, and he watched them with morbid fascination as they curled into unique shapes before his face.

"Fucking _freezing._" He spoke to ease his mind, to chase away the chilly silence that had settled in the room, although he didn't really care if anyone heard him or not. His own voice was enough comfort in the room, enough to keep him awake and to keep him from wandering too deep into the treacherous darkness of his mind, and that was all he could have asked for, while in his current situation.

He stood, stretched, and walked over to the fireplace at the opposite end of the room. It would do no good for the man he had been assigned to watch to catch his death from the chill of the place, and he scooped one of the thick logs from the black, metal cage placed next to the fire, tossing it onto the dimly glowing dance of flame that was already skittering around in its brick trap.

_Zell should be finished with cleaning that room anytime now, _he thought to himself, watching the flames swim up along the chimney, enthralled in their self-destructive dance to elude the wood that fed them. He felt an attachment to those flames, and he crouched before the fire, holding his hands out to the glowing heat to warm his chilled fingertips.

A flame flickered out toward his hand, and he watched it, emerald-green eyes locked onto the red and yellow glare as if daring it to grab his skin and burn him. It flickered before him for a moment, as it contemplating his dare, before it danced backward once more, snuffing itself out from being too far away from the center of the warmth.

As if on cue with his thoughts, Zell bound into the room moments after he had taken his position before the fireplace, a flurry of electric energy and enthusiasm. Using his weight, he pushed himself to his feet, turning away from the fire – with some reluctance – and walked back toward Zell, smirk pulled onto his face.

"Ya finally done? I was getting sick of sitting in here watching Sleeping Beauty." He mocked the boy with a practiced ease, and the younger blonde shot him a sharp glare of defiance, his arms folding over his thin chest, as if he were aiming to make himself appear stronger and taller than he really was. Seifer smiled at him, and, reaching forward, ruffled his hair in that big-brotherly manner of his.

Zell's look of sheer defiance melted away to a rather childish pout, and he pulled back from Seifer's reach, lips pursed in anger. "Don't treat me like a little kid, Seifer! I'm gonna be sixteen soon, and then I'll be a man, like Pa was."

Seifer snorted, shaking his head, before slipping away from the little blonde and heading back to the bedside of the mysterious stranger.

"A man, huh? Yeah, I'd love to see the day they made you a man." He could hear the boy's feet scuffing along the polished, wooden floorboards at his remark, the chicken dancing that little ruffled dance he was known so well for, and Seifer laughed, soft and deep and gentle, in the back of his throat.

The idea of Zell, the little chicken, his "little brother," growing up to be a "man" now was almost as humorous as the idea of Ma actually letting said little blonde leave the house without Seifer or herself around. Zell, despite how hard he tried to deny it, was more childish than he portrayed (or just as childish, in Seifer's opinion), and the aged warrior in Seifer knew Zell had quite the way to go before he could really call himself a man.

He would humor the boy either way, of course. He had quite the knack for spoiling the Dincht family, after everything they had done for him, and giving in to every little whim of Zell's, every childish dream and hope and longing he had just proved this. It was one of the ways he felt he could repay them for the kindness they had showed him when he was in his worst, and, even if he didn't have the funds to repay them properly, he assumed what he did was just as good in both of their eyes.

"So, mister man of the house, gonna tell me what I'm supposed to do with our guest here?" As if his words had set the blonde's mind back on track (he had a horrible tendency to forget exactly what it was he had been doing, and Seifer often had to take the liberty to remind him, one way or another), Zell bounced to his side, full of that energy so characteristic to his personality.

When the boy stopped beside him, however, he felt a solemn sort of calmness come over him, and he frowned as well.

There really was something remarkable about the man before them, something otherworldly that made his blood run cold and his hair stand on end that he wished he could name. However, he knew there was nothing he could do on that matter for now, and he nudged Zell in the ribs, back to his mocking self, to get his attention.

"Yeah, sorry. It's the big room down the hall, second one on the right from here. All ya gotta do is put 'im in the room, and wait 'till he wakes up. Ma said something about shoppin' for supplies the other day," he paused here, electric-blue eyes darting to the darkness-marred window at the back of the room, before dancing away toward the fire, as if to have the light of the flame chase the shadows from his eyes, "but with the Darkness the way it is, I'm not sure that's gonna happen."

Seifer nodded, and sighed quietly to himself, ice crystals dancing and wrapping around themselves before his face as he did so.

The Darkness was clearing, little by little, but, at this rate, it would be another day or so before he could get outside without having to worry about the complications that came from venturing into the Darkness. They had a stockpile of supplies packed into the Inn for occasions such as these, and, because of their lack of guests, it was still holding out fairly well. Given time, however, he would have to travel outside, despite the tiny twinge of fear that licked at his insides at the thought.

And with an injured guest on their hands, the need for fresh bandages, bedding, medication, food, and water was made greater, and pressed them for time more than he had wanted.

He shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind, blocking them out with the task at hand. He would think of the Darkness when the time came; for now, he would worry about what was presented to him in the present.

He never had been one to look too far back or too far forward into time. For him, the past wasn't really there, and the future was too uncertain – in his opinion, the present was the only thing he could guarantee, and that's where he kept himself.

Or tried to keep himself, even though the past had a tendency to creep up on him at night, when he was at his weakest, fatigued from a need for sleep and the thoughts and feelings of the day finally catching up to him.

Bending down, he pulled the blankets back from the man before him, exposing his form to the chill of the air. Regardless of this, however, no shiver passed through the pale skin of the traveler, and Seifer frowned, scooping the form up into his grasp, carefully, delicately, and pulling him against his chest, supporting his weight.

The man was smaller in his arms than he had thought he would be, thinner than normal and clearly not anywhere near being healthy. He seemed underfed and sickly, a fact that was made very visible when he lifted him completely from the bed, small yet still holding a strange sense of power and independence to him, and Seifer found himself staring at the tightly drawn face of the man longer than necessary as he stood there, Zell's voice and a light punch to his bicep pulling him from his daze.

"Come on, Seif. Ma said to be real careful with 'im, 'cause moving him might hurt him more." He nodded in response, moving away from the bedside to follow Zell down the hallway and to the indicated guest room.

The room Zell had mentioned was the largest guest room in the Inn, more expensive and well furnished than any other. A fireplace, already glowing brightly by the time Seifer had stepped into the room (more than likely the handiwork of Zell, under Ma's orders to make the room presentable for their new guest), was positioned closest to the door, along the same wall. The room was made more comfortable by a dark, blood-red rug on the floor and various decorations of simple pots and jars, all made by Ma, and a table, set over to the right, by the large, picturesque window, was cleaned and ready for use. Around the table were two wooden chairs, crafted by Ma's late husband, and on the table were various plates and bowls, stocked with fresh fruits and dried meats, for when the guest awoke. The window at the back had a simple, dark curtain hanging around it, which was currently tied back with two strong pieces of rope, revealing the clear glass pane beneath. The walls were dark wood, and the floor was a similar shade, the entire thing bearing a warm and comforting feeling, despite the overall simplicity of it.

Tucked into the far corner of the room was a large double-bed, freshly equipped with cleaned bedding; an oak nightstand was next to the bed, a few feet away from the mattress, just enough to provide whomever may be staying in the room with a space to climb into the bed, and on the nightstand was a fresh stockpile of snow-white bandages, a wooden bowl filled with clean water, and a bundle of medicinal herbs, all wrapped together with a small piece of sand-colored twine. Seifer walked slowly over to this bed now, careful so as not to harm the guest he carried in his arms, and, waiting for Zell to pull back the sheets of the bed, he placed him down on the hay-filled mattress.

"There." Zell pulled the blankets up over their charge after he backed away, arms crossed, face set into a stony scowl, and he turned to the smaller boy, rolling his neck and feeling the snap and crackle of muscle and bone disagreeing with his time spent hunched over in that chair. He watched the sleeping traveler for a moment longer, eyes set on his pale, icy form, scanning him up and down, tearing him apart with his eyes as if to search for a signal, or a beacon, or some other kind of clue as to who he was, where he had come from, and why he seemed so _familiar _to Seifer, as if he had seen him before.

Desperately, he tried to run over the possible times he may have meet the smaller man in the village, but he came up empty-handed, unable to think of a time when he had seen someone _quite _like him before.

It was his mind playing tricks on him, he told himself, tearing his eyes away from the man on the bed and instead watching Zell as he pulled another log from the rack beside the fireplace, tossing it into the hungry grasps of the flames that licked out toward him, calling him in. It was his mind trying to create some explanation for him, some past; his mind trying to find something to cling to that he could call familiar, could know as something he had always had.

Zell turned to him, a frown on his slender lips, and walked up before him, his smaller hand falling on Seifer's before the large blonde could realize it. Blinking, clearing the fog from his mind and his eyes, he gave the boy a tiny smile (as false as it may be) of reassurance, squeezing the slender fighter's hand in his.

"So, wanna go get something to eat? I'm sure he'll be fine on his own for a little while longer." Seifer said, tilting his head toward the door, arm wrapping around the boy's shoulders – why, he wasn't sure, but the sullen look that had crossed over the blonde's face ever since he had laid eyes on the traveler was painfully not like him, and if even the smallest action to make him smile again was going to help, he would do it – and holding him tight to his side, a brotherly hug filled with something a little bit more than companionship. Electric-blue eyes watched him for a moment, a sadness darkening their depths and making them just a shade deeper, like the clouds in the sky during a summer storm, and the boy nodded, his own arm, so much smaller than Seifer's but still fleshed out with a strength that was hard to believe, wrapping as best as it could around the taller blonde's waist.

"Yeah, I'm _starved_. Ma was cookin' something that smelled really good when I walked by, and I bet it's done by now." He let Zell lead the way, tugging on him and pulling him out of the room, and he cast a backward glance, over his shoulder, toward the man sprawled on the bed, icy-chill air thick in the room and sending a shiver up and down his spine.

It was strange, he thought, how the room they were just in was so much colder than the hallway was.

The door shut with a quiet click and a rush of blizzard-laced air behind them.

-----

Fully fed and away from the ice, Seifer was now able to think clearly, lounged back in the plush chair in the main room of the Inn. In his hand he held a small blade, shorter than his forearm, but still a decent length for an attacking weapon, and on the blade, running up and down in delicate, golden detail, were the inscriptions of some form of magick or another – what they meant was beyond him, but it was soothing to just sit here, basking in the heat of the flame that blazed before him, running his fingers over the warm, flat side of the blade.

He held it up with a mild sense of interest, watching the light of the fire catch on its sides and sharp point, reflecting a false sunlight around the room and over his face, a fractured dance of light that made the room seem a little less bleak and a little more mysterious, traced with a golden spread of designs.

The reverberation of colliding pans rang out behind him, crashes that sounded like harsh explosions in his mind, but he was so far lost in thought that he did not hear more than what sounded like a gentle beat of wings in the air, drumming at the inside of his head. The sound helped him relax more than anything else, and he watched with a detached sort of enthrallment as the fire spread throughout the fireplace, leaping up to the side, dancing along the brick, tickling over the metal casing that held it in and eating up the wood it used as fuel, devouring everything in its path.

A hand fell on his shoulder, and the thoughts vanished, dispelled from his mind like smoke, left to drift back to the dark corners of his emotions. The song that had been playing out behind him had ended, he realized with a start, more than likely some time ago, and now Zell was at his side, hands still damp from washing the dishes, a small smile on his face. He couldn't help but think Zell still looked so grim whenever he caught eyes with him, but he pushed it away as merely a tension that came from the situation they were being handed, and thought nothing more of it for now.

"Hey, Chickie. Done with work?" His voice sounded coarse to his own ears from disuse, and he realized then that he had been sitting there for quite some time; the younger blonde nodded, and his hand, moist and cooled from dishwater, grabbed his, pulling him up, out of the chair he had sunken into.

"Yeah. Ma said you should probably head back up there now – said he's startin' to wake up, and she's gonna need to change his bandages, but she wants some help." Arching a single, golden eyebrow, Seifer allowed the smaller boy to lead the way back up the staircase and toward the guests room, although he wasn't sure how he would be of help to Ma. Raised as a warrior all his life – or the bits and pieces of it he could remember – he had little to no knowledge about medicines, bandages, or healing methods. The most he would be able to do would be offer curative magick to the man – he assumed that was his purpose, and thought nothing else of it.

Magick was a rare occurrence amongst the townsfolk and everyday people; to cast magick, one would have had to undergo extreme training that no one knew the details of. Seifer had learned he was trained in basic magick when they had been trapped in the Inn during the midst of a cold snap in autumn, and he had been able to start a fire with no idea how he had managed it or why he was capable of such a thing. At the time, he had thought nothing of it, had assumed it was nothing more than a normal action, but the looks he had received from both Ma and Zell had spoken otherwise.

Unable to remember his own past, however, he had no idea when he had undergone the training to perform such an art, and had simply considered it a byproduct of the knighthood he didn't remember, and thought nothing more of the subject, until now.

The creak of the wooden door to the guest's room caused Seifer to be drawn from his thoughts, and he watched, quietly, uncharacteristically, as Zell pushed open the door and moved to the side, giving him clearance to the room.

That familiar, otherworldly chill he had come to expect when he was around the mysterious man swept over him when he stepped inside, but he was used to that by now, and held back the tiny shiver that threatened to overtake him, tickling at the base of his spine. Ma was already in the room, seated in a chair beside the bed, bandages in hand, and the brunette traveler, blurry-eyed and half-conscious, was now seated upright, leaning on a plush, overstuffed pillow against the dark wood headboard of the bed. His head was tilted to the side, obscuring his face from Seifer's view beneath a curtain of dark brown hair. The blankets were pooled around his waist, and his chest, visible in the firelight provided by the blazing flame at the far end of the room, was still wrapped in a tightly bound patchwork of bandages, stained dark, dried-blood-brown in several sporadic places.

"Ah, there ya are." Ma spoke over her shoulder, her hands fast at work removing the bandages from the forehead of the man and her attention focused solely on her task at hand, "hun, hand me that fresh role of bandages on the table over there, will ya? I left 'em on accident." He nodded, doing as he was instructed. Coming up to her side, he handed her the tightly bound handful of gauze, and she took it with a grin and a tilt of her head in thanks.

Close up, he could catch a faint impression of the man's face, now that he had turned his head back to face Ma so she could bind the bandages once more to the large, lightly bleeding gash that ran along the length of his forehead. The injury was half-healed, poorly treated and bruised around the edges, and Seifer found himself wondering just how their strange guest had managed to receive the injuries he was now so colorfully sporting, a strange patchwork design across what he could only assume had once been clear, spotless flesh.

He would have asked, were it not for the sight that meet him when the man turned to face him instead, his mouth snapping shut with a click.

Deep blue eyes, stormy-dark and laced with a silver glow of icy-cold precision, locked with his gaze, rooting him in place and causing his breath to catch in his throat. The man's eyes, however, were not the only thing that caught his attention and made him stare blankly at the figure before him: a delicate scar, thin and precise and perfectly aligned on his brow, tore down between those startling eyes, from somewhere near the gash on his forehead, across the bridge of his nose, and down beneath his left eye. A familiar chill worked into his very being as he stood there, watching the man, gazes locked together, and, absently, he reached up to his own forehead, lightly tracing the scar there with the tips of his fingers, mouth ajar, face contorted in question.

As if the action had broken the man out of his stupor, the traveler glanced up to Seifer's forehead for himself, eyes widening just a fraction at the scar that greeted his gaze.

Before he could ask any questions about the matching scars he now realized they bore, however, Ma had finished her duty of wrapping the bandages around the wound, successfully cloaking the dark-red mark from view, and the man had turned his head away once again, swiftly, as if he were ashamed to watch Seifer for much longer.

"Seifer, this here is Squall. Squall, that's Seifer – he's my assistant around here. Does all the dirty work for me." If Ma had noticed the exchange of startled and confused stares between them, she failed to acknowledge it. Instead, her voice sounded almost cheerful as she introduced them in that brisk – and, unfortunately, infuriatingly simple – way, and he watched as the traveler – _Squall_ – flinched, as if the words had been an invisible blow to him, knocking the wind from his chest.

Ma's introduction had managed to bring him back his voice, however, and a moment later he was glaring, hard and cold, toward Ma and the guest, confused questions running through his mind in a dark turmoil of thoughts. "Who is he?"

The striking resemblance between their scars, the familiarity of his appearance, that icy cold aura of his – all of it seemed familiar to Seifer, annoyingly so, and he watched, arms crossed, as the man offered no further explanation to his position.

_Infuriatingly still! He just sits there like nothing ever happened, that bastard! What does he know that I don't? _His thoughts were brash and harsh and fiery in his mind, licking over his skin, as if to scream at him to move, to do _something, _to find answers for himself. _Who **is **he?_

There was something about the man that made his blood boil, and Seifer's frown hardened, watching the man through narrowed, molten-jade eyes. A voice, soft and gentle, fluttered at the back of his mind, seeming to chant at him, mock him, words over and over again, a long mantra he could barely pick apart: _hate him, hate him, hatehatehate**hate**!_

He wasn't sure if the thoughts were his own, or simply the strange presence that haunted his dreams; he clenched his fists at his side – why was he so _tense _all of a sudden? – and watched the man, as if trying to pierce through his layers with his gaze, pick him apart and pull out the answers he knew the man must have for him.

"A guest." Ma's answer was calm and simple, and her hand feel on Seifer's arm, diverting his attention away from the man on the bed who he was desperately trying to place, and he glanced down at her with a sharp flicker of his eyes. "Now, Seifer, sweetie, mind headin' to that nice little store next door and buyin' some fresh supplies, herbs, and bandages? We're gonna need 'em, at this rate."

She was trying to get him to leave. It was that simple. The Darkness was lifting, just a tiny bit, but for him to travel out could still be risky.

"But –"

"You'll be fine. Things are startin' to clear up now, anyway."

Before he could protest further, she had climbed to her feet, sweet smile set in place, and had handed him a list she had, no doubt, prepared for him ages ago, and a small satchel of gold, before leading him out of the room and through the doorway. Leaning up to him, she wrapped him in a tight hug, and, away from the man at the bedside, he could catch a flicker of almost saddest and apprehension in her sugary-sweet, brown eyes.

What was going _on?_

"I'll explain when the time comes." She answered him almost as if she had read his mind, had picked up on the turmoil that was plaguing him, and she smiled at him, releasing him from her grip. "Just head back when you're finished."

And, with those frustrating, overused words of hers, she shut the door behind him, leaving him in the hallway with a handful of money, a shopping list, and a very confused blonde watching him with dark, electric-blue eyes.

* * *

_I'd like to apologize for confusing anyone with the prologue of this fanfic - I realize it is rather odd, and has quite a different writing style, but it's the last time I'll be doing something to that degree (maybe) in this fanfic, I promise. Also, the details of the Darkness mentioned will all be explained, just slowly (in other words, in the next chapter); I like to drag out the details before shedding light on the answers, to add to the effect._

_Thank you for previous reviews._


	4. Chapter Three

**From the Mind  
**Chapter Three  
_by chaosvincent_

"_by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." – _Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

* * *

The Darkness slithered, coal-black serpents in the air, across the buildings that lined the walkway, the barrels stuffed in the alleys and the clothing lines that had gone long forgotten, strung up like marionette strings between the houses. It crept along the ground, digging deep into the earth, as if to pry into the land itself for its prey, its victim; it whispered, cold and soft and sweet, to itself, words that glided over one another like silk: _find him, findhimfindhim, tear it all _apart, _apart, he has to be _somewhere, _findhimfindhim!_

Tendrils wrapped around the brick of the building, claws made of black, black nothing that tried to tear through the walls; they slipped along the stone and slithered and writhed up windowsills and across dirt-smeared glass, searching for cracks, for leeway into the houses they could not enter, into the domains that were sealed against their prying gaze. Eyes in the Darkness, eyes that were hard to see unless one knew what one was looking for, gazed, icy-cold and unyielding, through the night, searching, peering into windows and watching the people, only to be cast away when the flames in the fireplaces leaped up and shook their golden waves at the Darkness, as if to say: _"leave here!"_

The Darkness reached, clawing at the air, tearing through the clouds and to the night sky, hissing like hot water poured atop ice, screaming out –_we will find him – _into the night.

Squall Leonhart could feel it all around this place. He could sense the Darkness reaching and prying along the walls of the building he was residing in now, could feel them pulling at his mind, trying to force their way through, into his thoughts and into his heart. He could feel them digging, searching, begging for entrance, for the one they were searching for. He pushed them back with force and built up the walls in his mind, as weak and crumbled as they had become.

He watched the window across from him with stilled silence, his lips pulled into a thin line and his hands folded into his lap as the woman at his side dressed his wounds, no words passing between them. In the night, he could see the faint reaches of a woman's hands, thin and slender, soot-black and deadly, as they clawed along the glass pane, pawing at him, threatening to reach him.

He was not worried, however. In here, he was under the protection of this house, and the Darkness, try as hard as it might to pick, pry and pull apart the very foundations of this building, could not enter this domain. It was Forbidden: the protection that had been cast upon this building ages ago prevented such intrusions, and he knew he was safe here, for the time being. Here, he could rest.

"You're pretty beat up, y'know. At this rate, yer not gonna be able to continue on for a few days, Darkness or no Darkness." The woman's voice was smooth, hearty and deep, filled with warmth that reminded him of sugary pumpkin-spice tea around warm fireplaces in the middle of winter, of hot meals and comfort. Her fingers, soft and plump, moved carefully over his chest as she bound his ribs in the white bandages she had just unraveled for such a purpose, and he leaned forward to allow her access for such a feat, a diminutive, gentle smile on his face (he could not help but smile around her, for she was always so kind and gentle to him).

"I heal quickly. It should not take longer than one night." He responded to her quietly, sure of himself. The wounds he sustained were great, but he could heal them once he was given an opportunity to gather up his strength enough to cast the magick that was required, and none of the wounds were life-threatening. In a worst-case scenario, he would be bedridden for another day after this.

It was a risk he did not particularly want to take, however; staying here longer, regardless of the protection that had been cast around this age-old building, would put the Dincht family into danger. He did not want to risk their health for his safety.

"If ya don't mind my asking, how'd ya manage to get all of these injuries? Last I saw ya, you were in tip-top shape." He smiled at her beneath the curtain that his bangs provided, a bittersweet, forced grin.

"The last you saw me, the war had yet to come to an end."

She took those words as an indication to question him no further, and once more the silence fell between them, laced thick with the questions he knew she wished to ask but dared not to for fear of dredging up memories of a time he was better off forgetting.

The war had ended four months ago, and he had lost. He had lost, and the country he had tried so desperately to fight for had fallen under the control of the very woman who had struck him down and had imprisoned him in the dark, cold chambers of her castle for the past three months. Scarred, bruised and battered, he had managed to flee from the claws that had held him prisoner a month ago, and had narrowly escaped her clutches to get here, where he knew he was safe.

Ma Dincht had been good to him before, when the war had been in full swing and he had had no choice but to stop here during a break in the onslaught of monsters and warriors sent from the Sorceress. His father had known her for some time now, trusted her with his life and safety, and he had been able to do the same.

At that time, however, it had looked like he was winning the war, and Ma's husband had still been around.

Now he was left with the ruins of the war, the scars of a lost battle, and the memories of a failure that burned, thick and hot, liquid fire in the back of his throat, whenever he thought of them.

"Things have been a wreck here since the end of the war. She's been sendin' out all kinds of monsters and creatures lookin' for you, y'know, tearin' up the countryside and keepin' us all trapped here." Ma sat back in her chair with a creak of wood that sang out into the otherwise still air, whipping her hands of his blood on a dirtied rag that had once been sitting on her lap. "People are startin' to go crazy, wonderin' if this Darkness 'o hers is ever gonna let up." She tossed said rag into the bowl of water that rest on the nightstand, before focusing her warm, chestnut-brown eyes on his face, examining him closely.

He was hit with a pang of regret, deep and cold, in the pit of his stomach, when he locked eyes with her. Quickly he tore his attention away, once more focusing it on the darkness that swirled like poisonous smoke outside of the Inn window.

He knew that the Darkness was looking for him and he knew it was here because he had been in this town for far too long, giving it a taste of his essence, a sign that he had stopped here. With the injuries he was suffering from, he had not been capable of leaving this town when he had planned to, and the cumulative energy he must have left for Her to find caused the Darkness to pinpoint his location, bringing an eternal night up this place, like a deadly black raven sweeping over the sky.

He was sloppy. Were he strong enough, capable enough, he could have prevented this curtain of blackness from descending, could have left the town and its people behind before She sensed him and reached Her hands out toward him, digging for his position.

A warm hand falling on his icy-cool flesh brought him from his mind, and he wrenched his eyes away from the dust-coated glass and the claws of Darkness beyond, instead locking eyes with the woman at his side once more. A soft, motherly sadness was in her expression, and he felt like she was filling in for the mother he had never had, as he always did when he was around her. Gently she brushed his bangs out of his face, focusing on his bandage-wrapped forehead, as if she could see straight through the white gauze and to his scar beneath.

His scar. The man from earlier, _Seifer—_

_Seifer is _here. _He's _alive, _and_ _here, of all places! Why? He should be dead, should have been disposed of by the Sorceress, _he thought, remembering the man from only moments before, the look of pure hatred that had been cleverly masked within emerald eyes and a sheen of curiosity that glittered on their surface, the questions that had spilled from his very being.

Seifer was_ here. Alive. _The Sorceress had not killed him after all, but—

"Seifer." The single word drew Ma's attention back to his eyes, and, were he to look close enough, he would have realized the twitch of concern and sadness that swept over her visage with the mention of the blonde's name. "He's here. Why?"

He could tell by the way she stiffened, just a fraction, that she had been anticipating this question from him since he had seen the man moments ago. Her hand stopped its gentle movements in his hair, instead falling onto her lap and tangling, ever moving, into the edge of her apron. She remained silent for a moment, watching him as if weighing her options, planning what to say to calm the cold, venomous anger that he could feel sweeping through him, like the waves of an ocean, at the thought of the blonde's face, the emerald-green eyes _watching _him and berating him and fire—

"I'm takin' care of him. He's helpful around here – does a lot of the work Pa used to do that Zell can't do yet." Torn from his thoughts and the sweeping cloud of his past, he watched her through a narrowed, icy glare, scowling at the patchwork quilt that was pooled about his waist and pulled close to his body, not for warmth but for comfort.

'_Taking care of him?' _He ran the words through his mind, allowing them to sink into his thoughts, slow and deliberate. She was taking care of the man who had put him here in the first place, the man who had put them all there in the first place.

It was ironic that he should come here for assistance as well, that he should appear here at the same time as him to seek guidance and advice and shelter.

"Does he know?" Brown eyes flickered to blizzard-laced blue, and she held his gaze, stern and proud, unlike many who locked eyes with him; the look of sadness in her eyes and across her face answered his question before the words could leave her mouth:

_He has no idea who he is, where he's at, or what he's done. Nothing. He remembers nothing at all. _

It was difficult to believe, even for him.

"He hardly remembers who he is, and he doesn't remember a thing from the war. Can't blame him, either, for not tryin' to remember it. Who'd want to?"

He fell silent with her words, his head angling toward the sheets that spread across his legs, his fingers tracing the stitched patterns as his mind worked away at the possibilities of the situation.

If Seifer did not remember what had happened, then it was for his favor in the long run – with the very person who had been the only obstacle he had to worry about out of his way, unable to remember even his reason for being where he was, he was almost guaranteed a safe, clear trip back to Esthar from his current location.

A frown creased his thin lips, his brow furrowing along the deep scar that ran there. Esthar was in a state of ruin after the war had torn the country into pieces, having lost the battle against the Sorceress' army several months ago. With the defeat of the mighty magical nation, Esthar and the cities that surrounded it had fallen into the clutches of the Sorceress Herself – as far as Squall knew, She had currently taken up residence in the castle in Esthar, leaving the King to the dungeons and the soldiers that had once guarded the castle to either be tossed to the Darkness She commanded or to be turned into mindless puppets for Her use.

The situation, in all actually, was grim for Esthar. With the King under the Sorceress' possession and the strongest knights of the country dead, imprisoned, or missing, there was little hope for a revolution against the dictatorship that the Sorceress Edea reigned down upon the once-powerful military nation.

It was precisely this reason why Squall needed to leave as soon as he was capable of doing so for a hasty return to his home nation. Having been born in a small country town by the mighty city of Esthar, he had been raised as a warrior in the castle grounds, along with a handful of children similar to him who had had the dream of becoming a warrior in their future.

He forced the images from his mind. He didn't want to dwell on the past, for it would do him no good in the long run. With the current situation at hand, Squall needed to heal quickly and leave Balamb City as soon as he could, before the Darkness really did break all boundaries and reach him where he currently resided.

Turning to Mrs. Dincht once more, he regarded her with a quick, sharp flicker of his eyes. The matter at hand was the Knight who was currently living here – Seifer Almasy. The past that the man had put behind him, be it from choice or from an outside force, made it imperative that the Knight leave this place as soon as possible, to protect the people who lived in this town.

Seifer's presence could very well be more dangerous than his own in this place.

"Tell me how you found him, and what he remembers. I need to know how dangerous he may be."

Ma nodded, her hands crossed on her lap, over the white apron that she bore, a solemn look set into her normally warm and motherly features. A flicker of regret danced through Squall, warm and burning in the pit of his stomach, but he pushed it back beneath a veil of ice. Regardless of the wishes of the Dincht family, it was impossible for Seifer to remain here any longer than he already had.

If he were to make it to Esthar, then it would be best to find a place for the Knight, his biggest obstacle, first.

------------------

With only a small leather pouch filled with clattering gold coins and that faded list clutched in his hands, Seifer Almasy walked through Balamb City's streets with his head tilted downward and a scowl burned onto his features. Dust curled around his feet as he walked along the dirt streets, his body on autopilot through the mid-darkness that was still lingering in the air around him.

With the coming of winter, the wind was sharp and chilly, and he wrapped the cloak he had grabbed before leaving the warmth of the inn closer to his body, forcing out the freezing blast of air. Around him, the lights of the stores and homes that lined the main street he traveled down lit a path for him to walk along, a strip of dim yellow against the dark brown of the earth and the deep black of the Darkness that still lingered in his surroundings, like ink stains on the world.

The city's general store was a warm little place halfway across the city from where the Dincht Inn was. It was a pleasant building run by an old man by the name of Cid Kramer, a citizen in the city for as long as Seifer could remember, who always had a sad sort of smile on his face and wrinkles that showed just how old the man had become after the war. His assistants, the two people other than Ma and Zell who had befriended Seifer during his stay in Balamb City, were an inseparable duo, Raijin and Fujin, the muscle of the shop and the brains behind the store, respectively.

Seifer smiled at the thought of the two. Raijin and Fujin had been eager to give him their friendship, and, in return, he had provided them with someone who could help out around the store when need be, an extra set of hands to assist Raijin when a new shipment came by. It was one of the few ways he managed to bring in money for both himself and the Dincht family, what with the sad decrease in customers at the inn as of recent, and Seifer valued their friendship more than anything else (Ma and Zell aside).

The general store, called "the Garden" for some reason Seifer wasn't too sure of, was where the Dincht family bought most of the supplies that they needed: food, clothing, and drinks were all in abundance at the shop, as well as a variety of exotic and strange supplies, knick-knacks, and items that could prove useful at any time of day. The store was an odd assortment of any and all necessities that a person may need, Cid keeping the oath of a store that could be useful for "anyone and everyone, no matter what the circumstance!" driving the little wooden building to grow into the biggest franchise in the city.

It was in this direction that he walked now, money and list in hand. The parchment was rough beneath his touch, and he ran his fingers over the neat black letters there, sparing the writing a brief glance to check over the supplies.

_Bandages, medication, food, and traveling gear? _His eyes stopped on the last item on the list, a single, golden eyebrow arching – causing his scar to stretch and itch in response – in question to the request.

It was true that he was in need of new traveling gear (his own had been in tatters when Ma had found him, and he had been unable to buy a new set as of yet), yet the request caught him off guard. As far as he knew, he had no need for the items that had been listed, and he frowned darkly to himself as he reread the list once more.

It was better not to question it. If Ma had made the request, then all he had to do was simply obey it and come back with the items she had requested, regardless of the inquiries he may have to her motives.

Shoving the questions to the back of his mind, he pushed the paper back into his pants' pocket, lifting his head and scanning the area around him to judge his distance from the general store and to occupy his mind as he walked against the chill wind of pre-winter that bit down on him, like tiny, prickling needles of ice.

The Darkness that lay like a thick blanket over the city had yet to completely disperse: in the dim glow of the daylight that managed to shine through the curtain of gray and black that painted the sky, the shadows that lurked around the corners of buildings and in the alleyways seemed pronounced, standing out as black testimonies to the hard times that had fallen over the citizens of the country.

Something deep in Seifer seemed to respond to these shadows. A creeping sensation, a feeling of being watched that caused the hairs on his arms to stand on end and brush against the inside of his cloak, sending shivers through his body, sunk deep into the depths of his stomach, and he glanced, warily, amongst the shadows that surrounded him.

It was as if he were being watched by the Darkness itself. As a nervous habit, he reached to the side of his neck, his bare fingers slipping along the collar of his cloak and brushing along his flesh, nails and fingertips tracing out a pattern he had memorized after doing this for so long.

The mark that was branded into his neck had been there since he had awoken. It's meaning was lost to him, a symbol with no history behind it, in his mind, but it was a source of comfort to him when he was lost in the turmoil of his thoughts. Beneath his fingertips the brand felt warm to the touch, and he rubbed it to ease the tiny pain that sunk into the knots of flesh in response to the sensation of being observed that had overcome him.

Shaped like a slightly altered cross, a brand of a knight, the marking was a deep blood red in color, approximately two inches in height. Starting at the base of his neck, it stood out against his tanned skin, a visible tag to his past that he did not remember; the brand was the source of more questions than almost anything about his past, with the exception of the scar that tore down his face.

His scar. The frown that graced his features deepened, and he trailed his fingers from the burning brand on his neck to the deep scar that marred his otherwise smooth complexion. Deep and dark red in color, the marking was more of an imprint on him than the tattoo that was etched into the side of his neck.

A cold, sickening feeling crept up his throat when the thought of the traveler named Squall slipped into his mind. They shared matching scars – nearly mirror images of one another, reversed on their faces, yes, and varying slightly in position and size, but a damned remarkable coincidence, if you asked him.

It was disconcerting. The anger he felt when he thought of the man, deep and burning with an unspoken hatred rumbling in his mind, had no sensible origin. Having never met the man before, there was no reason for him to feel such anger toward his presence. However, it was impossible for him to shake the sinking feeling that the man knew something _more_ about him and the past that he did not remember, and that aspect itself made him even more eager to gather the supplies he had been ordered to collect and return to the Inn as soon as possible.

As if in tune with his thoughts Seifer realized that he had already reached the general store, and he glanced up at the front of the building, examining the familiar dark wood, glass windows and old flowerpots that lined the stairs leading up to the large, oaken front door. The pots were old, cracked and dirt smeared, made of a rare kind of ceramic that the woman who had once lived down the street had been skilled in molding, and the flowers were from the floral shop that had gone out of business when the Darkness had become too thick, according to Ma.

The flowers that had once been in the pot were dried and wilted now, light brown in color and hanging, limply, from the sides of the pots, like the fingers of a beast reaching over the tan edge toward the earth below where they would strive.

He couldn't help but feel that the dead flowers were all too fitting with the current state of the world.

Quickly he tore his eyes away from them, stalking up the front steps and pulling open the door with a strong grip. The bronze bell that hung from the doorway jingled with his arrival, alerting the storeowner that he had a new customer, and he shut the door with a soft _click _behind him, turning his back to it and looking around the store.

The feeling of being watched and the burn in his tattoo that accompanied it had faded to the back of his mind as he stepped into the store, away from the prying Darkness that had crept around him before; he did his best to ignore that fact, shoving it away from his immediate thoughts.

"Seifer!" The deep, rumbling voice was accompanied by a strong set of arms gripping him firmly around the shoulders, and, before Seifer could even turn to face his assailant, he was being jerked back against a large chest and held in a friendly hug. "Good ta see ya. Been a while since you've stopped in, ya know." Warm and smelling of the fish that the man brought in, Raijin's burly frame was almost impossible for Seifer to break free from, and he chuckled under his breath as he struggled to push himself out of the overzealous man's grip. As if finally realizing that Seifer was unable to move away of his own free will, Raijin released his grasp on the blonde ex-Knight, smiling ruefully at him.

"Raijin." He tilted his head toward the dark-skinned man, a smile set on his face, and he turned, glancing to his left. Fujin was standing with her hands folded behind her back, all poised and stiff, but a faint smile was curving her thin lips, a gleam showing in her single, crimson eye in greeting to his arrival. "Fujin."

"ASSISTANCE?" Fujin's voice, a rough, brash tone that was laced with an accent from some country Seifer couldn't remember the name to, was unmistakable. Speaking in broken words and fragments of sentences, the woman's speech was just as much of her trademark as the silvery hair that hung about her face and the thick, black eye patch that was strapped across her left eye.

He had never dared to ask her what had happened to her eye: Fujin was more temperamental than he was sometimes, well known for her short fuse and strength, and even Raijin knew to never purposefully invoke her anger (which did not mean that he didn't do it every now and then on accident, resulting in a rather swift, precise kick to his shin that left him hopping about like an idiot).

Raijin was the complete opposite of Fujin in almost every way. Tall and muscular in build, he had tanned skin, dark hair, and a rather odd habit of speaking with the words "ya know" attached to the end of nearly every sentence that left his mouth, be it awkwardly placed or not. Brash and irrational, the man was a good person deep down, and Seifer valued his friendship and his strength greatly.

The three of them made a strange group indeed, but they had become the only other people in the town to warm up to him during his stay, and he would go out of his way to ensure that they had the best. They had become a bit of a posse over time, the three of them wandering the streets of Balamb City at night, hanging around the tavern so late that both he and Raijin would have to be dragged back to the little house where the duo lived afterward, drunk and exhausted but smiling and laughing like he hadn't in a long time.

He smiled fondly at them both, fishing through his pocket for the list that had been given to him earlier.

"Yeah – Ma sent me out shopping again. Mind taking care of this for me?" He extended the list out to Raijin, who beamed at him in the wide, warm smile of his, taking the parchment and giving it a quick glance before offering him a mock salute.

"I'll get whatcha want – be back in no time, ya know?" Seifer nodded in response, watching Raijin as he turned away from them both and headed into the back of the store, vanishing from view.

Raijin and Fujin were always around to help Seifer whenever he needed it, be it at the inn or simply a need for a sudden companion, someone to listen to him as he told about the past he didn't remember. For that very reason, they had both become very skilled at reading his moods, and, when Fujin stepped up before him, her crimson eye watching him critically, he was not surprised that she had sensed the disturbance in his mind.

"ALRIGHT?" He smiled at her, stepping away from the entrance to the store and leaning comfortably against the wall next to the door, watching her with softened emerald eyes.

"Yeah. Just been doin' some thinking lately." He knew he wasn't really telling her what was bothering him, but she nodded, respecting his avoidance of the subject. Fujin knew when to speak and when to provide him with a silent companionship, and he thanked her quietly for that.

He wasn't sure what he would have told her anyway. That he was beginning to think he had found a key to his past? That he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that something or someone was watching him?

It sounded crazy to his ears. He wasn't even sure if half of it was true or just his mind and hopes getting carried away, providing him with wishes and desires that were unlikely to really come true.

"DINCHT?" Fujin's voice brought Seifer from his thoughts, and he tilted his head toward her, catching her eye. She was speaking to draw him out of his current state, the subject typical and simple, and he was once again thankful for her intuitive knowledge of his defenses. He thought about telling her everything later, when he had figured it out himself, but, for now, he'd leave out the details. He didn't want her to worry.

"They're doin' good. Got a new guest in last night. Strange guy; he just woke up today. He hasn't said much." His voice was nonchalant and carefree, yet it was obvious that she had picked up on the emotions that lay beneath, and she watched him for a long moment before nodding slowly at him. "Hey, Fuu? Thanks." He wasn't sure why he was thanking her, but he felt a need to do so, nodding his head toward her and offering her the best replica of his normal smile that he could muster in reassurance.

She looked like she wanted to say something more in response to his words, but she was stopped by the heavy sound of Raijin's footsteps as he walked back into the main room, a dark sack hanging over his shoulder, stuffed with the supplies that had been on the list from Ma. Seifer cast Fujin one last glance, reaching out and placing his hand on her shoulder, before he stepped up to Raijin, taking the bag with a grin.

"Got everything?" He asked, taking the bag with one hand and the list with the other, shoving the latter into his pants' pocket while tossing the bag over his shoulder, holding it by the twine that tied it together.

"Yep, everything ya asked for. Hope ya like the gear I picked out – I figured it'd fit ya, ya know?" Raijin beamed at him, seemingly quite proud of himself for taking so little time to get the supplies, and Seifer smiled back, a warm, sunshine smile of thanks.

Pulling the pack closer to his shoulder, he turned back toward the door, stepping up to it and pushing it open with one hand. A blast of cold, frosty air swept over him, chilling him deeply, and he grabbed at his borrowed cloak, wrapping it closer to his body in preparation for the walk back to the inn. Leisurely he looked back over his shoulder, locking eyes with Fujin and offering the duo another brief smile.

"Tell old man Cid I said 'hello' for me, guys. I'll see ya later." He heard them both mutter their respective goodbyes: Raijin's a loud shout of "visit again soon, ya know!" and Fujin's a crisp yell of "careful" in that strange speaking habit of hers. He stepped outside, into the pre-winter chill, and shut the door quietly behind him, making his way down the front steps of the store and back onto the dust and darkness thickened street.

As he stepped outside, he had a sinking feeling that he was once more being watched, and he pulled his cloak closer and tilted his head down and picked up his pace, trying to put the feeling and the slithering Darkness behind him.

* * *

_Squall, angry little lion that he is, is finally awake. The poor boy has been complaining to me about his lack of importance thus far, and he's finally managed to work his way into the main plot. I promise things will start to get much more interesting now that setting up the characters and plot has been tackled._

_Once more, thank you to those who have reviewed so far. It really makes me glad to know this fic has caught some interest._


	5. Chapter Four

_**From the Mind  
**_Chapter Four  
_by chaosvincent_

"_the beginning of the end of the beginning." – the smashing pumpkins_

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The Sorceress sat in the throne room that was hers yet was not hers, her mouth moving to form foreign chants to this land, spilling out of her like water.

The words fell from her lips and pooled about her in a flow of her Magick, sweeping round her ankles and gliding over the tiled floor beneath her pale, slender, bare feet. The air smelled of burned ozone and dust and nature, the stench of a Sorceress' Power; the atmosphere was chilly, blasted with an otherworldly freeze that bent time and nature. Walking into this room, one wondered where one was and when one was: there was no sense of conceivable time in such a place. Her Magick and the Magick of the Sorceress that flowed through her spilled and defied this world's order, bending nature and laws until they snapped, flimsy twigs old and weak with age and pressure upon their limbs.

She sat upon her throne, her arms perched on the wooden armrests at her sides and her head pressed back against the seat's black velvet cushion that spread taller than she sat, reaching up to the marble archways that were decorated with cobwebs and loops of her Power. Her eyes were closed and her full, crimson lips were parted, rose blossoms on her face, as words poured from her very being, casting her Magick through the world in black serpents and deadly fingers that reached to places that most did not even know existed.

The Power poured from her being, spilling over the land that she reigned over, searching and prying for that which she desired.

_Find the boy, _she whispered to the black nothingness, cooing softly and motherly to the creatures of the Darkness that she had created and now commanded, _find the boy, and destroy him. Tear him to pieces._

The Darkness purred an agreement to her, obeying her desires, and spilled from her fingertips like dark threads, sliding over stone and up walls to creep out of the windows and into the distance.

She felt it flee from her and slide away to do her bidding, as she would feel a flow of cool water from an autumn-cooled spring. Around her, her black dress pooled about her slender body, velvet rivers spilling down the throne and pooling at the bottom of the chair in a onyx flourish of cool cloth and dust and cobwebs.

Her head was lolled to the side, and her golden-speckled eyes watched the marble floor, yet they did not see the stone that was spread in a gorgeous, delicate mosaic before her, for they were unfocused and distorted, seeing yet not seeing.

Her mind was not with her body. Instead, it traveled with her Magick, flowing over the world and being her eyes where she could not reach, showing her where she desired with only a simple bend of her Will and a twist of her thoughts. She traveled through cities that cowered in fear of the blanket of darkness her Power brought to their lands; she traveled through forests where the creatures hissed and fled from her presence amongst them, sensing her strength and fearing to get in her path; she slipped through cracked, crumbling ruins of temples, erected to gods and goddesses that were once worshipped on a grand scale, that had fallen during war, and toward towns and over worn, burned battlegrounds, black as night and smelling heavily of singed pine and burned fur and death.

A mission: she must find him. He knew. He knew too much. With the knowledge he had, he could defeat her easily, effortlessly, swiftly. He could find the Knight. She had been monitoring the Knight, yes, she had been lingering around him so thickly that it would have been impossible for the boy to slip beneath the claws of her Magick, and she was sure that he was still tied to her invisible strings, bound to her eternally.

Yet, and yet, what if? There was always the "_what if?"_ What if he found the Knight? What if he fled from her grasp completely? What if he tapped into that power that she _knew _he possessed, could sense even when he was far, far away from her, and cloaked himself from her? He has done it already! What if he managed to make it _back? _What if what if what _if?_

"My Lady."

Her head snapped up at the intrusion, and the massive, elegant headdress that she wore as a crown jingled, an eerie clatter of noise in the otherwise deathly silence of the room, shattering the stillness with a sound like water flowing over chipped stone and glass.

The man before her was no man at all: a creation of her Power, it was man-like in appearance, yet it was far from man. It stood tall and was strong; it was broad shouldered and bore the faint indications that it was semi-humanoid in appearance. However, it was comprised not of flesh and bone and blood, but, rather, of a swirling blur of midnight-black and storm-gray and rose-red, loops and wisps of her Magick given a slightly solid form. It could bend to any shape it desired, and could travel through the air as a thin mist. Nearly indestructible, it was the perfect warrior for her purposes.

She lifted her eyes to its form, watching it with heavy eyelids.

"Yes?" Her voice drawled out, as if caught in an eternal dream state, thick and course yet soft and seductive, drawing in all who listened to its words of promise. "Have you found him?"

"No, my Lady." Its voice was one voice and many voices speaking all at once in a tongue from ancient times, from when the world was new; it was a blend of her Power and the other's Powers, bestowed with the knowledge of nature and time and things that no normal man knew of. She knew of all of these things, could speak this tongue fluidly, though how she had learned it and where she had learned it and when she had learned it all escaped her at the moment.

No. Don't think about it. There's no need to think about it.

"However, we are getting closer. A rough location nea-" its voice cut out, as it sometimes did, wavering between this world and the other world, but she paid the slight disturbance no mind, too used to the falter in the creature's design to care, "-found."

"Good. Very, very good." She rose, slowly, as if pulled by strings that bound about her waist and arms and neck, tugging her very gently and very calmly to her feet. She straightened, standing before the throne; her shadow cast out before her, a darker stain on the stone than the Darkness that already spilled over it. She walked, _glided, _down the path that her shadow cleared for her, her arms raised before her as she passed the creature at her side, her hand, wrapped in a glove of her Magick, passing through it and dispersing it into mist and passing on the knowledge it had to her. A faint smile crossed her slender, rouge lips as she continued on, knowing now where to send her Magick next.

Slowly she paced to the center of the room, across the tiled, mosaic pattern, black and white and black and white, one after the other, forming from this perfect square of gray in the very middle. The swirl of Magick stained the stones beneath her bare feet and filled the air in this very spot, for she had used it many, many times in the past, and her presence had been left in this location, as one's presence tends to do when one uses a place or a thing many, many times.

It was from this position that she raised her arms high above her head, black, sleeved claws that reach up toward the marble arches of the ceiling and the tendrils of her Power that decorated them. The air crackled with her Magick, snapping like twigs and branches in a furious storm as she pulled the spell from her body, her lips moving numbly with words that she could not hear, but could feel, resonating in her body.

It was as if her arms were stretching, rising and lifting and bending in impossible ways, clawing up over marble and through forests and over barren wastelands, through cities and towns and ruins, to the place where she knew she would have the best luck finding that boy. Darkness spread beneath her hands, through her arms, and she spun her Magick as a spinner would spin cotton, stretching it and thinning it out to perfection. She laced it through trees, over plains, over hills, and she knew that her trap had been set.

Slowly she lowered her arms. A smile graced her thin lips, and her eyes were focused on nothing before her, yet they watched everything around her, reaching further than this chamber and the range of her human eyesight. The "what if" no longer mattered.

Prince, little weak, little pathetic, little Prince, I will find you. I will find you and tear you apart. I will— 

-x-x-x-x-x-

"_–find you."_

Words that whispered in his mind, coming from no visible origin, no logical point around him: Seifer had heard them a few times before, calm and soothing, unclear and muddled and wrapped up in a thousand other voices all belonging to one single creature – or human, he couldn't tell – speaking at the exact same time. They laced themselves into his thoughts, making their presence known, but he wrote them off as nothing more than his imagination, most of the time.

The words that spoke now were broken and disjointed, as if only bits and pieces were able to weave into his thoughts and make themselves known. Strangely comforting and eerily familiar, the voice sent a shudder down Seifer's spin as he slipped into the Dincht Inn and shut the door hastily behind him.

A curl of cold air followed after him, ice fingers reaching to him as wood forcibly shoved it back, and he relished in the welcomed heat of the fire that blazed in the corner of the room. Shadows danced in the room from the glow of fire, and Seifer found himself oddly comforted by the warm scent of burning pine and the odd flicker of light that the fire provided the room with. It was comfortable and familiar, and he welcomed it, relishing in the atmosphere for a moment.

The wave of heat that spread throughout the room made the prickling sensation of being observed, a feeling similar to tiny pins and needles at the back of his neck, dim down into a bearable, numb sensation on his flesh; the warmth soaked into his chilled limbs, thawing out the stiffness that the pre-winter air had brought to his body.

Placing the cloth bag he had been given by Raijin moments before on the floor, beside the doorway, he slipped his traveling boots off with a deliberate slowness to his motions. Unlacing the front, he wondered, briefly, if the man from earlier had already left; the Inn was quiet, something that was precious and rare in the Dincht family, and Seifer had a sinking suspicious in the pit of his stomach and in the knots of scar tissue between his brow that the man still remained.

This didn't bother him so much as arise new questions in his thoughts. There were many things he wished to ask Squall, if only because there seemed to be something more behind the man, namely something that pertained to Seifer in particular, that was being left out.

Seifer had never been fond of being shoved to the side.

His boots fell to the stone floor with a soft _thud,_ and, pushing them out of the way to prevent them from obstructing the path of the Inn door, he gathered the new purchases into his arms once more, slinging the bag back over his right shoulder. The bag was not heavy, but it seemed to weigh him down as he walked through the warm Inn entrance and toward the wooden steps that led to the bedrooms, as if a massive weight, a premonition of some kind, was tucked away in the folds of cloth and medicinal supplies that were tucked away in the bag.

Zell was standing in the doorway to his bedroom when Seifer reached the top of the stairs and turned into the hallway, his electric blue eyes looking up toward the taller blonde with something akin to frustration, admiration, and a strange glow of jealousy. Seifer was unable to pin what the emotion was, no matter how long the two held their awkward eye contact, and Seifer offered the smaller boy a grin, and a hand, to break the stiff uneasiness between them.

"Didja get what Ma wanted?" Aside from a slightly distracted tone that was laced into his voice, Seifer noticed, the boy seemed to be just as he normally was. Seifer disregarded the odd behavior and nodded, watching Zell's back as he took off down the hallway and led him toward their new guest's chambers, to alert Ma of his return.

Watching Zell's back, Seifer once more had that unsettling feeling that something was going to happen. His stomach twisted around itself, sliding over ice and chilling him inside more than the pre-winter twilight had outside, and it was all he could do to force it back as he continued down the hall.

Everything seemed to suddenly change around him, as if a switch had been flipped at some point in his life and all of the thoughts he had ever had about how mundane life had become had suddenly caused everything he thought to be true to suddenly become questionable. His past was still a blank blur of dark nothing to him, lost in a haze of fog that thwarted any and all attempts he may have made to pry deeper into his memory. He had no idea where he had come from, how he had become the way he was, or where he was even _born, _and yet—

And yet _Squall_ seemed to know something. Seifer wasn't exactly sure what it was the other man may have known about him, but there was something there, glowing in the back of his eyes with a flicker of recognition and hatred and something else Seifer couldn't quite capture, that caught his attention. Squall _knew. _What he knew, Seifer wasn't sure, but the fact that someone knew anything about the past that even he did not remember was a step in the right direction, in his book.

He frowned. There was more to it, though, wasn't there? He himself had had a reaction to the man that had made no sense to him at the time: the anger, hatred, and something else – _betrayal? Had that been it?_ – he had felt upon seeing the man had been familiar yet entirely new to him.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end when he walked passed the hallway window. From his peripheral vision, he swore he could see a form as sleek as night and deadly beautiful watching him with cat-yellow eyes from the depths of darkness that surrounded the glass.

He kept his head tilted toward the wall.

"—stay here. There's too much risk." It was the sound of Squall's voice, low and soft, analytical and precise, drifting through the hallway that caught Seifer's attention and made him stop dead in his tracks several feet away from the guest room door. Open enough for Seifer to see the flicker of the firelight against the far wall, the voices of Ma and Squall could be heard over the faint crackle of the fire, hushed tones that were obviously reserved for a private conversation making their way out into the hallway just audible enough for Seifer to pick up on the key parts.

For a moment, he debated on opening the door completely, or taking another, deliberate step forward to let them know that he was standing outside of the door. It was none of his business, this conversation of theirs, and that small part of him that upheld honor no matter what the circumstance told him that he would be best off leaving the conversation private.

Had he been a better man, he assumed, he would have listened to this voice. As the circumstances were, however, he felt he had every right to listen for just a little bit longer, and judging by the way Zell had yet to enter the room as well, the small boy instead pressed against the wall with a look of concentration spread upon his face, he wasn't the only one who had disregarded his conscious for curiosity's sake.

"He's been fine so far. 'Haven't had any problems yet." It was Ma's voice this time. Laced beneath the motherly warmth and concern, Seifer could pick up on a faint trace of something close to sadness and protectiveness in her words, and he leaned closer to the door to catch each bit of the conversation the best he could.

A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him he knew what – or, rather, _who _– they were talking about. He tried to ignore it for now, instead focusing on the conversation beyond the doorway.

"But there _will _be. It's not safe. He cannot stay here." Squall this time. Absently, Seifer noted to himself how smooth the man's voice seemed, as if he always had control over what he was saying, his words thought out long before he had actually spoken them. The tone he spoke with was soft and easily overlooked were one not paying close enough attention, yet the severity his voice carried made it so it was hard to overlook his words, regardless of how soft they may be. It was obvious that he knew what he was doing and he had plenty of experience behind him to prove it.

For a moment, Seifer was curious. There was an itching in the back of his thoughts that wanted to go in and learn everything about this man, from the beginning to the end, right now.

He felt that he already knew all of that already. Like he'd grown up with the man and they'd moved far away and he'd simply let it all corrode away in the back of his thoughts.

It was nonsense but, he mused, it was possible. He had no idea where he had been before he showed up at the Inn.

_If that's the case, then my childhood probably sucked._

Abruptly the voices spiraled off and died down to muffled whispers, as if Ma and the guest were afraid of having their words overheard, and Seifer had to repress the sudden urge to groan loudly in frustration at the sudden complication to his plans. (Zell seemed to share his sentiment, as he swiftly narrowed his eyes the moment the conversation died down and moved closer to the door as silently as he could.)

Attempting to do the same, Seifer tightened his hold on the bag that was still draped over his shoulder, praying to Hyne that the damned thing didn't make any noise when he moved from his spot. The floorboards were old and worn, and he watched where he stepped, suddenly thankful that he had removed his mud-stained boots at the doorway for once.

"Seifer is a _threat. _Even if he doesn't remember anything, that doesn't change the fact that he's still _dangerous. _He can't stay here – it would be putting you, Zell, and the rest of this town at risk, were she to come looking for him." There was a brief pause, and in that moment Seifer's mind tried to catch up with the words that were being said in the room beside him. The voices continued before he could get anywhere. "The Sorceress _will _come back for him. She has already started looking."

If Ma had a response to the words Squall had said, Seifer didn't hear them. Lost in his own thoughts on the matter, it was like he had shut himself out from the world for a moment, trying to grasp what exactly was being said about _him, _of all things.

The Sorceress? What would she want with someone like _him_, some washed-up, forgotten soldier in this town out in the middle of nowhere?

The notion sent a sickening chill creeping down his spine, like water being poured down his back, from the base of his skull to the base of his spine. He had heard plenty of stories about the Sorceress, swapped around by the townsfolk and the superstitious and the weary travelers who stopped by the Inn to drink Gin until they were warm and rosy-cheeked and willing to tell their tales. He had heard how she ruled the land even without being there, how she could change her appearance as she desired; he had heard how she had all-seeing eyes around the world and hands that could reach you wherever you were, that you could not escape.

He didn't believe most of what was said of her. She was human, gifted though she was, and he found it difficult that one human woman could contain so much power within her. She was terrifying, beautiful and soft-spoken yet strong and wise with knowledge that had ripened in her mind over the years, the travelers said, and that he believed. That she could wipe away an entire person's being and that she could manipulate earth and time and reality to her pleasure was something entirely different. He was a bit of a skeptic, he'd be willing to admit that firsthand, but now he was finding himself a little unsure.

"What if?" seemed to be more of a plausible question than he had ever thought it to be before.

And then there was the fact that Squall had said he was a 'threat.' He was strong, skilled in battle, but he'd never intentionally cause harm to the civilians of this town, and he would definitely never do anything to hurt Ma or Zell after everything they had done for him over the past few months. For this man, who knew him but didn't, to assume that he would ever think of harming either of them, regardless of the circumstances, only caused the anger in him to flare up once more, bright red and fiery in his mind and tingling in his fingertips.

Before he could react, however, Zell had done it for him. There was a shuffling of feet and a creak as the door's hinges cried out as if wounded as the door swung wide, revealing the entirety of the room to Seifer's gaze. Zell was standing in the doorway, a guarded expression pulled tight over his face, his eyes showing something close to anger that the blonde had never seen in his smaller companion before.

"Seifer's back with all the supplies, Ma." He spoke as if they hadn't just been standing outside of the room listening to the entire conversation, although Seifer knew full well, as he stepped inside the room and glanced between Squall and Ma and caught the shimmer of acknowledgement in their eyes, that both of them knew they had been there. He was tempted to say something, to ask the questions that were currently buzzing around in his head, blurred and mixed with anger and frustration, but a silencing glance from Ma, a promise of an explanation later deep in her eyes and in the creases in her face, made him bite his tongue. Were he not so confused himself, he would have gone against the glance and asked the questions regardless, but a loyalty to Ma made him obey her wish, if only to ensure that he would get the answers he needed later on.

"Good. Sit them over there." She said, indicating toward the corner of the room and the small, wooden table that was placed near the large window. The window was smeared black with the creeping night and darkness outside – the days seemed increasingly short in this town, and Seifer couldn't judge if it was midday or dusk. He stepped to the table, placing the back down with a jingle of supplies and a rustle of cloth.

The room was silent. The chill from before soaked into the air and made Seifer's exposed collar and neck prickle in response, hair standing on end in the chill. Zell shuffled to his left, behind him, a sort of nervous habit the boy had picked up as he had grown and had become restless and eager for motion.

Seifer turned, a frown on his face when he locked eyes with steely gray-blue, the gaze set on him, and it was then that he realized that the prickling of his flesh and the chill hadn't come from the air.

He stood still for a moment longer, silence all around him, eyes on him, and waited. He waited for an explanation, for some kind of words, for Ma or this traveler to scold him or punish him or explain to him what the hell was going on, but he found no such solace to his uneasy thoughts.

"Well?" He asked, hoping the word would break the ice and bring an explanation forth. No one responded.

Seifer was out of the room before Ma could call his name and bring him back.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Ma found him spread over his bed, arms tucked behind his head and face directed toward the ceiling, well into the night. She slipped into the overly warm room, ducking beneath the doorframe to fit inside, and shut the small, wooden door behind her with a click of the latch falling into place. Seifer did not turn to face her as she entered, and she thought him asleep, and wondered if, perhaps, she should leave and return later to address the situation.

She shook her head to herself, a sad sort of sigh sliding from her lips. She could not put off the topic for long, not with Squall on her heels about the past and the looming threat of Her overhead.

A motherly sort of kindness overcame her when she wiggled around the gatherings of discarded clothing and boots and bags, sliding her way onto the wooden chair that was perched beside Seifer's bed, tucked into the corner. In sleep it was hard to tell that this man, someone she had cared for and nursed back into health and housed as if he were her own son, could be the man who had scorched the land under Her command. It sent a sharp stab of sadness into her to think of what was to come of him, and she reached out tentatively, resting her plump hand upon his shoulder to gently awaken him.

"Who is he?" Seifer's voice, sudden and clear of any remnants of slumber, startled her, and she leaped a bit, her breath catching for a moment, before it occurred to her that he had not been asleep at all.

"Someone important."

"I _know _that." He turned to face her, his eyes dark, twisted with clouds of something she was not familiar with. As he watched her, eagerly, searching for a better explanation, she realized just how deep the scar between his brow ran, how much more jagged it was than the one down Squall's face, as if the one to give it to him had been unable to hold a blade steady during the assault.

"How does he know me?" Seifer's voice brought her from her thoughts. She tightened her hand on his shoulder, but he drew back, shaking her off and turning onto his side so he was propped upon one elbow, watching her through molten jade eyes.

She had heard, from a traveling merchant who had stopped at her Inn many years ago and who had carried jewels she had never dreamed of seeing before, that jade was a coveted, sacred gemstone in distant civilizations. Faced with Seifer's bright gaze, it became clear to her why a color she had thought to be so simple at the time was a precious gemstone. The color was impressionable, soft at times, hard at others, fluctuating between the two as Seifer's moods shifted and changed and the thoughts that possessed him darkened or lightened or emptied.

"I can't answer that, Seifer. It's not my place." Before he could protest she lifted a hand, her face setting sternly into a look of determination. If he wanted an explanation, he would be best to remain silent and listen to her, for once in his life. He had always been so difficult to handle. "But you can find out for _yourself_. If I tell ya, you'll never figure the rest out." It saddened her to keep this from him, to keep his past wrapped up in well-told fabrications and sugarcoated, diluted truths.

There was a moment where Seifer seemed to mull over this, his eyes a dark shade of jade, more emerald than not. She watched him, her lips pulled into a round frown, her thoughts bounding around in mindless circles, in possibilities, in fears, in worries.

"I'm going with him." He finally said, determination in his voice. She shook her head, and smiled at him, reaching out to once more rest soft, round fingers on his arm.

"I knew you'd say that." She stood now, looking around the room, the leather belts and bits and pieces of hardened, leather armor he had collected for himself over the past months spread amongst the discarded clothes and boots. She had known this would be coming from the very beginning; it was inevitable that he'd leave sooner or later, be it because someone came to take him away or he wandered off on his own when the questions became too much for him to handle on his own, and she was not surprised to hear that he intended to leave with Squall now.

"Squall's leavin' town tomorrow at dawn, first thing. He already knows you're goin'." She turned to him, hands in her apron, face set into a warm, motherly kindness, eyes on his form. She seemed relieved for now with the aspect of answers before him, but there was still a darkness of confusion, anger, frustration, and contempt that showed in the depths of his eyes and the creases of his face, like a painting spelling out the artist's emotions in the strokes of the human face, too complex for a non-artist's eye to comprehend. "Pack up what you need now; the supplies you bought today are for the trip. I'll have food bundled up an' ready for you by morning."

She made to leave the room then, the decision made and the plans set, to let herself think and get over sending him out and forcing him into his, but Seifer's call of her name brought her back.

"Thanks for everything." Ma didn't look back to him after he spoke: she merely nodded in response and slipped out of the makeshift bedroom, the light from the kitchen flickering and dancing like a forest fire beneath the crack of the door. He watched her go, his eyes focused on the shadows that leaped across the wooden floor, dark black ink stains on the ground that reached out to him, a map drawn on the pine.

-x-x-x-x-

Outside, the blackness grew and expanded, stretched and swelled like wood absorbing water, and the winter chill blew, a vicious wind from the north that tore down the land and bit into the sides of the buildings. Voices were hushed and words were muted and fingers clawed, up and down and along glass and stone and dirt and wood, searching, digging, anticipating, waiting. Foreshadowing. It stood, fluttering like a dead moth along the breeze, watching the lights flicker out in the windows of the buildings and the air cool with the breath of frost, and it observed, and it felt, in the folds of its nonexistence, the stirring around it.

_A fact: An object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force._

It smiled its false, half-smile, darkness darker in the creases that should have been its face. It had acted; he had reacted.

It watched the kitchen light burn out and fade away, a star falling from the sky.

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_First: I apologize for the delay on this chapter. School has recently started, and I was preoccupied with preparing for that, giving me little time to focus on writing – or, well, battling my ridiculous case of writer's block, which struck me halfway through this chapter. So, all in all, I'm really sorry this took me so long._

_Second: I realize I said things would start happening in this chapter. I kind of lied. Obviously. I also know this chapter was kind of boring, which it is, in my opinion, but, now that Seifer and Squall can get their sorry asses out of Balamb and can start moving, things will begin to happen. "Things" does include Seifer/Squall implications and large, anvil sized hints. So do not fear, slash fans. It will happen eventually – they just need to stop hating each other a bit first._

_Finally: Thank you to my past reviewers. :3 Reviews are very helpful._


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